Episode #289 // “ In the absence of your ability to handle pressure at your current level, your boss is going to think twice about promoting you ” Although every episode of No Bullsh!t Leadership is peppered with practical guidance on how to improve your leadership confidence and performance, I’ve never given you the specific recipe for improving your promotion prospects — until now! In this episode, I lay out a holistic inventory of the things that contribute to your promotability.  ...
Mar 12, 2024•22 min•Season 1Ep. 289
Moment #59 // Collaboration is one of the big buzz words of 21st century leadership. But the concept of collaboration in business dates back to the 19th century, as an underpinning feature of the theory of the firm. Although there are a lot of benefits to collaboration, the pendulum has swung too far. We’ve devolved into decision-making by consensus , and management by committee . The alternative is to empower your decision-makers with strong, single-point accountability. If you focus on collabo...
Mar 10, 2024•5 min
Episode #288 // “After almost 62 years on this planet, you'd think I'd know better – and I kind of do – but it doesn't mean I always get it right. ” We all know what to do, for the most part. Each day when we wake up, we can either choose to do it, or not do it. If we choose to not do it, then our brains quickly come to the rescue to tell us why that’s the best decision under the circumstances — this is rationalization , and we all master it at a pretty young age. But, no matter how hard we try ...
Mar 05, 2024•20 min•Season 1Ep. 288
Moment #58 // Conventional wisdom tells us that we have to put people before profits … that if we look after our people then, in turn, they will look after our customers, and the business will thrive. But the problem with conventional wisdom is that, even though there’s always at least some grain of truth to it, it’s easy to oversimplify, to rationalize, and to misinterpret. The people before profits mantra is one of the great oversimplifications of leadership. If we did put our people first, do...
Mar 03, 2024•4 min
Episode #287 // “It's way easier just to roll your sleeves up and fix something, than it is to put in the hard work of leadership to lift someone else's capability. ” As a leader, you face daily pressures which are quite different from the pressures that confronted you when you were a carefree individual contributor , responsible only for your own work. The type of pressure, and its intensity , depends on a number of things: the sector you’re operating in; the organizational culture; the compete...
Feb 27, 2024•20 min•Season 1Ep. 287
Moment #57 // Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is often summarized as: the survival of the fittest . But, in fact, Darwin’s conclusion was that those who survive aren’t necessarily the fittest – they are the most adaptable . As a leader, one of your most valuable characteristics is your capacity for change. Change is constant. But many of us don’t cope with it particularly well. We often struggle to understand the change that we’re asked to adapt to in our work lives… and what we don’t under...
Feb 25, 2024•6 min
Episode #286 // “ While one in four people in the workforce have managerial responsibilities, very few have actually been trained. 82% of leaders are accidental. ” Many people in leadership positions were promoted because they were good at their jobs — their technical jobs. When ambitious professionals want the status, the power, and the money that come with career advancement, they have to accept that leading other people comes with the territory. With little leadership training, and even less ...
Feb 20, 2024•16 min•Season 1Ep. 286
Moment #56 // We talk a lot as leaders about how to give feedback, and it takes many years of experience to actually get good at it. What we don’t talk about nearly as much is what to do when we’re on the other side of the table! Receiving good quality, helpful, accurate feedback is essential if you want to reach your performance potential. If this is true, then why are we so averse to receiving feedback? Learning how to receive and implement feedback is a critical skill for leaders ...
Feb 18, 2024•4 min
Episode #285 // “ If you make decisions in isolation, you're likely to miss the implications of those decisions on the whole ecosystem, and this is often where the cracks begin to appear .” Like many of you, I’ve done quite a bit of flying over the course of my adult life. I’m not a nervous flyer at all, but I’m always interested to see what’s happening in the world of commercial aviation. This bumper episode is a mini case study on Boeing, which has been in the news again recently – for all the...
Feb 13, 2024•28 min•Season 1Ep. 285
Moment #55 // Being right isn’t everything – it’s just a good start. Many leaders like to position themselves as “ the smartest person in the room ”. And there’s a lot to be said for superior intelligence. But you have to know how to use your intellect to get the best possible outcomes from your people. To excel as a leader, you have to go way beyond your pure intellectual horsepower, and enter the nebulous world of emotional intelligence and human connection! You can take a deeper dive in...
Feb 11, 2024•4 min
Episode #284 // “ There are very few bosses who will say “no” when asked if they’d like feedback. But even though they might say “yes”, you have to read the play – do they really want to hear it ?” I spend a lot of time and energy helping leaders to build their capability in giving feedback to their people: how to engage them in difficult conversations; how to review their performance; how to know when it’s time to say goodbye to someone who isn’t performing. Let’s face it, if you want to be eve...
Feb 06, 2024•19 min•Season 1Ep. 284
Moment #54 // We all think we know how to negotiate. After all, our negotiating skills are honed from birth, as we tussle with our parents to try to convince them to do what we want them to. Despite this, I learned a number of years ago that my negotiation skills were not what I thought they were. I was humbled in a fairly straightforward mock negotiation at business school. But what I learned in the following weeks equipped me to go on to negotiate and win several large contracts, worth b...
Feb 04, 2024•6 min
Episode #283 // “ If your people trust and respect you, there's nothing you can't say to them. ” When we talk about trust in the context of leadership, it’s normally about how to get your people to trust you! And, of course, this should be a critical focus for leaders at every level. But today’s topic runs a little deeper: how much trust should you give to the managers who work for you? ” Regardless of your org structure or the size of your team, at least some of your direct reports are bo...
Jan 30, 2024•20 min•Season 1Ep. 283
Moment #53 // The factors behind the increasing levels of work stress that people are experiencing are many and varied – it’s a complex issue. What is pretty clear, though, is that more and more leaders are reporting that they are burnt out. But, if you apply a couple of relatively simple and practical remedies, you will be able to protect yourself from burnout. SImple? Yes! Practical? Definitely! But easy? Absolutely not! It’s not easy because you have to learn to push back, and set some ...
Jan 28, 2024•5 min
Episode #282 // “ A lot of the more senior leaders reject No Bullsh!t Leadership, because the higher up they go, the more they have to lose – they have to protect their position, their image, and their identity. ” Our first episode of No Bullsh!t Leadership was produced in August 2018. This week, we achieved a major milestone - 5 million downloads of the podcast. To be perfectly honest, Em and I are pretty ordinary when it comes to celebrating success… and I often cringe at the thinly-veiled, se...
Jan 23, 2024•22 min•Season 1Ep. 282
Moment #52: Building Professional Credibility // Whatever you try to achieve as a leader relies, at least to some extent, on your credibility. If you have strong personal credibility, it makes everything you do inordinately easier. Credibility galvanizes your team… it instills confidence in the people above you… and it ultimately becomes an integral part of your leadership brand. Without it, every yard you manage to move forward feels… hard . Credibility is the hallmark of all great leade...
Jan 21, 2024•6 min
Episode #281 // “ If you focus on trying to make your people happy instead of providing the opportunity for them to develop their self-esteem, you're missing the point. ” Team morale is built through proactive commitment and focus. It doesn’t just happen. One of the great misconceptions of leadership is that, if you make people happy, they will perform better and team morale will be high. Although this is possible in theory, it is highly unlikely to happen in practice. One of our listeners...
Jan 16, 2024•19 min•Season 1Ep. 281
Moment #51// We’ve all sat in meeting rooms where we’ve been subjected to death by PowerPoint. For every leader, the ability to present information in a compelling, interesting way is your basic table stakes: it should be a vital element of your core leadership competencies. The good news is, it’s never been easier to put together a great presentation to get your point across. These days, there’s no excuse for a poor presentation, so I want to share some basic tips, to help you reduce your likel...
Jan 14, 2024•6 min
Episode #280 // “ The productivity decline isn’t just a flash in the pan: it’s a structural reset that we're all going to have to grapple with in the coming year. ” At the end of each year, I spend time analyzing a variety of sources to come up with a view on the range of possible outcomes for the year ahead—across business, politics, and society in general. Without trying to make any fearless predictions, I like to have some sense of how the world is trending: trend is your friend! Using source...
Jan 09, 2024•25 min•Season 1Ep. 280
Moment #50 // Many young leaders who have to manage older, more experienced workers find the whole process quite intimidating. Equally, older leaders who may have gotten by in their careers using a more directive leadership style, are confounded by their inability to lead millennials to do what they want them to do! If you’re a leader, you may have workers from four different generations in your team… from Baby Boomers, all the way through to Gen Z. Although each of these generations has definin...
Jan 07, 2024•5 min
Episode #279 // “ Most of us are highly rational leaders, and our instinct is to make the long-term planning process a purely intellectual exercise. But when it's done really well, it's much more than this — they have to protect their position, their image, and their identity” Do you want to start the New Year off on the right foot? Forget the New Year’s resolutions… they rarely breed long-term success. A better alternative is to spend an hour or two taking on our free Crush Your Career Challeng...
Jan 02, 2024•7 min•Season 1Ep. 279
Moment #49 // There are two types of people in the world: lifters and leaners . Lifters carry the burden for themselves and others… they take on more accountability than the average person, and they don’t rely on anyone else to make things happen. And leaners? Well they’re happy to let the lifters do the work! Anyone who’s genuinely successful (and I’m not simply talking about people with power, status, and money) is a lifter ! From the earliest available opportunity, you need to a...
Dec 31, 2023•5 min
Episode #278 // We’ve been producing this podcast now for over five years and, as we traditionally do at this time of year, Em and I are taking a look back on the year of podcast content. We’ve picked out our favorite episodes for you to go back and listen to while you’re enjoying some downtime in the New Year. We’ve had another cracking year at Your CEO Mentor : one where our global reach continues to grow! I’ve been living in the US now for over 2 years… Em’s daughter, Florence, is now walking...
Dec 26, 2023•17 min•Season 1Ep. 278
Moment #48 // One of the things that characterizes a high-performing team is the ability to withstand and harness the value that lies in healthy disagreement. In this moment, I look at the example of a failed company that demanded their employees needed to be loyal, above all else. In my book, loyalty means fearlessly telling the truth to the people above you, no matter what. But to them, it meant bowing to their authority and not challenging them in any way… particularly if they had bad o...
Dec 24, 2023•4 min
Episode #277 // The end of year is a time of renewal. We all instinctively take the opportunity to reflect on the year just gone, and reset our expectations for the year ahead. In this episode, Em and I do something we’ve never done before… we pull the curtain back on our business, Your CEO Mentor , and give you a window into our 2023 scorecard. How did we do? What were the things we focused on that didn’t actually pan out the way we expected? Which things went really well? We talk t...
Dec 19, 2023•23 min•Season 1Ep. 277
Moment #47 // There are literally thousands of articles and posts written every week about the attributes of great leaders. Humility , Transparency , Fallibility, Integrity . Although it’s fun and interesting to muse on these attributes, they lack any real clarity. If you actually decided that you wanted to take action to develop one of these attributes, where would you start? What habits and disciplines would you need to develop? Rather than debating the merits of leadership attribu...
Dec 17, 2023•5 min
Episode #276 // One of the biggest barriers to change, in any area of your life, is your own awareness of the size of the gap —that gap between your current state and your desired state. And I’m no different to anyone else! I’ve struggled with this principle over the years in a number of different areas… When I stacked on a few pounds after a running injury, I knew how much work it would take to get back to racing weight… and that became a barrier to starting my recovery process. Of...
Dec 12, 2023•21 min•Season 1Ep. 276
Moment #46 // As you transition through to more senior leadership roles, you’ll realize that you can’t continue to compensate for your people when they don’t deliver the results you want. You have to do your job, not their job. There are all sorts of repercussions to dipping down, and not working at the right level. Like, not focusing on your own job; like, diluting the accountability model; like, robbing your people of the chance to grow. Doing your own job positions you to lead your people to ...
Dec 10, 2023•5 min
Episode #275 // One of the most common questions I field from our leadership community is, “ Marty, how much time should I give someone when they’re not performing, before I make the decision to let them go? ” Like most questions in business, the answer is, “ It depends ”. Your job, as a leader, is to work out what it depends upon , and to position yourself to make a decisive judgment call in any situation. In this episode, I take a look at the example of the Haas F1 Racing Team , and its...
Dec 05, 2023•22 min•Season 1Ep. 275
Moment #45 // With the sustained, relentless pressure of performing as a leader in today’s business world, combined with the expectation that you’ll also perform in every other area of your life, it’s incredibly easy to burn out. That’s why it’s so important to have long-term strategies that make your life sustainable: strategies that, even when you hit the peaks of pressure that ebb and flow, you know how to manage your way through it. You can take a deeper dive into these insights by listening...
Dec 03, 2023•5 min
